I met Rina, a psychoanalyst, in the run-up to the opening of the Holocaust museum in Washington, where she was counselling the museum team.
As their appearance in the BBC series shows, they are very good at being de facto social workers, counselling the anxious, the elderly, the confused, the demented.
But he said that international institutions needed to do more, counselling the UN against complacency, or what Francis dismissed as "idle chatter".
Among the other methods it urges are counselling, the referral of seriously misbehaving children to as many as five different teachers, exclusion from normal classes and suspension.
Michels has treated warring agents from the same office and opposing parties in a creative dispute, who may or may not know he's counselling the other side.
Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, head of a victims' association, who is counselling the families, said: "What is clear is that there was no landing.
The Philippines is a deeply Catholic country and a priest, Father Harold Toledano, who had been counselling the Veloso family, said Veloso never lost hope that she would be saved.
Over the years, she has published numerous books, including a widely used textbook, "Counselling the Gifted and Talented," and she was a research consultant for the Stanford-Binet Fifth Edition.
Hamilton's mother, Maria, has spent the past days counselling the Smith family: "It kills me over and over again, each time another one of these shootings happen," she said.
Although his church congregations were now tiny, he worked around the clock, negotiating with the authorities on behalf of his parishioners, succoring the needy, counselling the desperate, befriending the friendless.
Crosby even found time for opponents who posed no threat, counselling the Green party mayoral candidate, Jenny Jones, that she was doing well but could profitably tack left – perhaps a further ruse to destabilise Livingstone.
